Matador Charters Fishing Report

Offshore Fishing Virginia Beach TUNAS

Wednesday June 24th 2009 - 15:00 AM EST

Added by: Jake Hiles

06/19 - I was supposed to fish thursday and we couldnt do it because of the weather. I was supposed to take Jim the Sysco rep and his business associates out but despite how bad I wanted to get out there, it just wasn't gonna happen with the forecasted winds. I had friday open and Jim couldnt reschedule. After I had called Jim and cancelled on wednesday night, big Larry called me up and said he had two or three guys that wanted to go on friday. I put a quick post on tidalfish and rounded out a crew. Friday morning, my three guys from tidalfish show up and Larry and his guys are nowhere to be found. Larry and his two buddies stood me up. I talked to the other three guys and we decided to go. Thanks Larry. Glad I could do you the favor.
It was a beautiful calm warm day. We started out on the south wall of the norfolk in 64 degree water. We picked at one or two smaller class yellowfin tunas at a time every 15 or 20 minutes all morning long. Everyone was catching them and they were EVERYWHERE. About mid morning, we had a very large wahoo come in and bite the spreader bar on the right flat. This was a 6 or 7 foot long wahoo and it snuck in, clipped the bait off the bar, then proceeded to come in and smack the tar out of the squids on the bar 5 or 6 more times. The fish then switched over to the short rigger, where we had a short lived hookup with a high speed burst before the hook pulled on that fish. It was a stud wahoo for sure though.
We pushed along toward the south and as the afternoon progressed, the water slowly warmed to 71 degrees and we began catching more tunas. The size of the fish increased as well. At first it started off being singles, doubles, and triples, but by noon the bite was hot as it could be and we were hooking up 8 and 10 fish at a time! We only had three crankers on board and these guys were getting worn down big time. For a short while we had all lines hooked up and the tunas were under the teasers with three or four fish at a time coming up and grabbing various portions of each teaser. After cranking those fish that were hooked up in, keeping the legal ones and releasing the short ones, we started taking the smaller, light tackle jig rods and hooking up the fish that were riding under the teasers. When the smoke cleared, we had over 80 bites, catching 54 fish. We caught around 15 fish on the jig which was very fun. Needless to say we brought home our limit of tunas, most of the ones we kept were barely legal (27''-31''), however we did have 5 or 6 that would have been over thirty pounds and one that would have been in the forty pound range. This was truly an incredible day of tuna fishing and the fishing has been like this for two weeks now.